


remember that you are someone's child

by erythea



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/Zero, Fate/strange fake
Genre: Canon Divergence - Fate/Zero, Fate/Grand Order AU where Sigma is a Servant, Gen, What-If, kiritsugu gets his shit together so maybe he's ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28502979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erythea/pseuds/erythea
Summary: “A peace created by burying the past… is nothing but a lie.”The assistant’s shoulders trembled as she recalled the man’s wife and the loneliness in her eyes. It was a strange feeling. She had never mourned for anyone before, either.No, there was someone. But he's not with her anymore. And yet—Maiya makes a wish. Magic answers.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	remember that you are someone's child

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Fateverse Holiday Exchange 2020 for [Seina](http://seina91.tumblr.com/)! Sigma is not the sort of character I'm used to writing, and I have NO idea what I'm doing, but... I hope you like this! Happy holidays!
> 
> For those who aren't familiar with Fate/stay night, I was going for an echo of [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qep9YfjGPTs)... yes.

There was blood on the man’s hands, but the Grail was empty and pristine. The Einzberns’ goal was to reach the Root. At the end of it all, he wondered if it was all worth it.

He turned to his assistant.

“What do you wish for, █████?”

His assistant’s eyes grew wide.

“My wish?” she said. “I don’t understand.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t have dreams. She had never wished for anything before. To voice a want and reach for it with desperation — that was something she thought she couldn’t do. She had no place in the world the man wished for, so she had no right to.

“You have a wish,” he said. “Rather, I think we have the same wish.”

She looked away. “I shouldn’t even be here.”

“We both shouldn't be here. But █████, you remember what she told you."

"Yes."

"So, what is it?”

"It’s your Grail. It should be your wish."

“Tell me what she told you. I want to hear it again.”

His assistant closed her eyes. It helped her see that woman in her mind.

“A peace created by burying the past… is nothing but a lie.”

The assistant’s shoulders trembled as she recalled the man’s wife and the loneliness in her eyes. It was a strange feeling. She had never mourned for anyone before, either.

No, there was someone. But he's not with her anymore. And yet—

Part of her wanted him to be.

“Remember your pain and sacrifice so you don’t make the same mistakes,” she managed between catches of breath. “A truly peaceful world would do the same.”

“Thank you, █████.”

His assistant watched him breathe in his victory. It smelled like metal and burnt skin.

“Do you believe her?”

The assistant bit her lip. “I want to.”

“Then, your wish.”

“I’ll leave it in your hands.”

The man sighed. His assistant pursed her lips. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. In the world the man wished for, those with sin were no longer needed.

“This is goodbye, then,” she concluded.

“No,” said the man. “I'll make my wish, but it will be nothing special. The world will go on, but I will be happy. You deserve happiness, too."

“I deserve happiness?”

The man closed his eyes and remembered a first love, a mentor, a mother. “Everyone does. So tell me, █████. What do you want to do?”

█████ parted her lips, and the rest was—

* * *

When Sigma wakes up, he is sitting on the porch. It is winter, but the weather isn’t cold. The refreshing evening breeze tickles his nose just enough for him to enjoy the air. The moon is beautiful. Like a pearl in the sky, it shines on the wooden flooring, its glow gentler than any streetlamp or strobe light. Chaldea’s simulators wouldn’t create a room so mundane — not for training, and not for him — so he must have rayshifted. This must be real. There was a new singularity, he remembers that much, but his memories don’t tell him why he is dreaming about wars he never fought in, or why he is basking under the moon in a country that isn’t his with a woman he doesn’t know.

The woman has straight black hair that goes up to her shoulders, framing a stoic face that is seeing a calm night for the first time. She wears a plain kimono. There is no glint in her eyes. She is nearly twice his age, perhaps even old enough to be his mother. Not that he would know — he never knew her.

But this woman knew his name.

“Sigma,” she says. “Is that what they call you?”

That’s what he told her, so he nods without making a sound.

Alone in a new world, anyone can be his enemy, but he doesn’t think this woman is. He doesn’t think this woman will ever be.

“Sigma,” she repeats to the moon above, the sound wistful and lonely. “How are you, Sigma?”

“I’m fine, ma’am.”

The woman doesn’t smile. She doesn’t frown, either. “Relax. It’s just a question.”

Sigma doesn’t know if it’s a question that holds any real meaning, but she sincerely wants to know, so he repeats his answer: “I’m fine.”

“You said you work for Chaldea now. Are you making friends?”

He considers what constitutes a friend. People liked to talk to him even when he was a nobody who ever said anything, and he did know more about several people than he’d like to.

“Yes.” He then considers making his answer longer. “None of them are as bad as Ross, ma’am.”

“Did you learn how to make jokes from them, too?” The woman huffs. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Sigma takes a second too long to say, “No.”

The woman says, “I see,” the small tug of her smile never leaving.

There is an awkward silence. Sigma thanks the moon for its dim light.

“What are your hobbies?” She resumes her line of questioning. He doesn’t know why she asks. He doesn’t know why she cares. No one asks him about himself. There is so little to know, so little to care about.

He knows the answer to this one, though.

“Watching television,” he answers immediately. “Films.”

“Comedy?” she offers.

“Yes.”

“What are your favorites?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you happy?”

“I,” he hesitates, “I don’t know.”

“What would make you happy?”

Sigma doesn’t know the answer to that, either. He thought a night like this would bring him peace, but peace isn’t happiness.

“Someone told me,” he begins with uncertainty, as if trying to recall words from long ago, “that maybe... I need something to believe in.”

The woman wraps her own blanket around herself. “Let me tell you a story, Sigma. Once upon a time, there was a man who wanted to be a superhero.”

Many children wanted to be superheroes, but Sigma has yet to meet an adult with the same dream.

“He saved me, so I followed him.”

“Why?” Sigma asks. It wasn’t like him to ask, but she looked like she wanted to tell him no matter what. He had to listen.

“I wanted to help him. I owed him my life and had no dream of my own.”

Sigma parts his lips, but ultimately gives her a hum of acknowledgement. He has nothing to say that wouldn’t prompt more questions. Perhaps, he thinks, she just wants to talk. Many people liked to talk to sort out their own problems. He isn’t like that. He doubts he could be.

“By the end of his war, I wasn’t supposed to be alive.” The woman sighs. “In his dream, there was no place for someone like me.”

“Someone like you?” Sigma asks.

“Someone who only knows war. Back then, I thought someone like that didn’t have the right to know peace.” The woman leans onto the wooden post, looking at the sky. “I remember when they took peace away from me. I hadn’t even given him a name. Even now, I can’t find him. Whether that makes me a terrible mother, I don’t know…”

Sigma wouldn’t know. He doesn’t know what a mother is like. Sigma remembers fielding the question to Richard once.

_ Someone you look up to, of course. Someone who supports you, always. Well, maybe not always, but... She does love you. She did, at some point. _

Richard’s answer always struck him as odd. He’s not sure why being loved should matter.

And even if it did, it only begs the question—

Is he worth being loved at all?

“You’re still searching, aren’t you?”

Sigma asks, and the woman’s breath catches in her throat.

“You’re still looking for him,” Sigma says slowly in a voice that almost drowns in the muted chirping of cicadas, “so he would appreciate that… I think.”

Sigma doesn’t know. He’s not sure if meeting his mother now would make him any better or happier.

But it would answer questions.

“Thank you,” the woman says, relieved and — he thinks — with an ache in her throat. “You know, that man… Kiritsugu. He won the war.”

“He won the Grail.”

“Yes. And I survived.”

“Did he become a superhero?”

The question sounds foolish the moment it leaves his mouth, but the woman never laughs. Sigma doesn’t think she knows how to.

“He became a superhero in someone’s eyes,” she says. “Then, he let me make a wish.”

“What did you wish for?”

Slowly, the woman sits up. She takes Sigma’s face in her hands and gazes upon him for what feels like the first time. Her breath shakes.

“I wanted to see your face.”

Her fingers trace his eyes, nose, lips, as if thanking the Grail and the gods for this one small miracle.

“Your eyes — they’re so much brighter than mine.”

Sigma’s eyes widen.

Her presence felt so natural, as if she was always meant to be by his side, that he’d forgotten to ask.

“Miss,” his voice trembles, “what’s your name?”

The woman looks away and purses her lips. “I’m not like you. I don’t have a name.”

“Sigma is a codename,” he mumbles like she’s made a small mistake.

“I know. But your name, your memories, your soul — they were all written in the Throne. Not only do you have a name, but you're a Servant. Do you know what that means, Sigma? You are somebody.” The woman’s voice is barely a whisper. “You are somebody _. _ ”

Gently, Sigma pulls the woman’s hands away. He now understands two things.

Firstly, he can say with absolute certainty that this is a singularity.

Secondly—

“You should have a name,” said Sigma. If she has fought and won and survived all sorts of wars before coming here, she must have a name by now. She had the Grail in her hands. Everything she could want was a wish away.

“I don't know it, but I will know it soon enough. That's what Madam—” The woman squeezed Sigma’s hands. “No... That's what I set out to do: to find it. Who I am, where I'm from. Madam told me those things were important.”

Sigma is quiet for a long time. Who he is, where he’s from — did he need to know that?

She says so, so it must be true. He knows it is. He’s felt it in the way he moves in battle, protecting faces he doesn’t know, fighting for a cause he doesn’t understand just yet.

“That man called you something.”

He must have. Even Francesca gave Sigma that much.

“I changed names for our operations,” said the woman. “The last one I had was Maiya. Hisau Maiya.”

“Then that's my name,” he said. “Hisau Sigma.”

For the first time, Maiya laughs.

For the first time, Maiya cries.

She sobs into her hands, shoulders shaking, joy and relief overwhelming her as she cries years of tears for all the times she's wanted to call out the words she meant to rip out of her throat long, long ago: my son, my son.

Then, everything turns alabaster white.

The singularity begins to collapse.

“What’s happening?”

“This isn’t a true singularity,” Maiya explains when she catches her breath, “just time and space created by the Grail to fulfill a wish. It reached out to you, and Chaldea answered its call. Now, its purpose has been fulfilled.”

“What will happen to you?” asks Sigma, his face shaken by a flash of emotion.

“Don’t worry. We will part ways here, but we will see each other again.” Maiya wipes her tears, but they don’t stop — not even when she shows him the brightest of smiles. “What do you do now, Sigma?”

The clock is ticking. Sigma considers how he can tell her everything in five words or less.

“I’m a superhero, I guess.”

“That's good. I'm proud of you.”

“Proud?”

“Yes. You're doing good. You're working hard.” She pats his head. “I was so worried, but you sound like you’re doing well. You’re all grown up now. Your mother is so proud of you.”

“...I see.”

When he thinks about it, nothing has changed. He still destroys nations for someone else’s sake. But he didn't want to tell her that. He didn't want to disappoint her.

“Sigma.”

Because he’s never heard his name said so sweetly.

“No matter what happens, remember that you are someone’s child. Remember that I will always look for you. Remember that I love you.”

Sigma has never been hugged before.

It is warm, especially around the shoulders, and the eyes, where his tears prick them with a feeling he can’t seem to name.

* * *

“You're back!” Ritsuka is the first to greet him.

“My! Earlier than we expected too.” Irisviel is second. Without thinking, she begins to fix Sigma’s disheveled hair and collar. “I heard some evil priests were still alive in that city, but I’m glad everything turned out alright.”

“Yes. It was a minor singularity...” Sigma tries to report the rest, but Irisviel’s fussing distracts him from what he’s about to say.

“Mother was worried about you!” Jack — a smaller, younger Jack — peeks from behind Ritsuka’s legs. “Mother, Iri, and everybody!”

“Mother was worried about me,” Sigma echoes.

For the first time, he tries to hold an emotion back.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/erythean)!


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